This past month the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) concluded deliberations on the constitutionality of Barak Obama’s signature healthcare legislation, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). Following three days of congressional hearing which were held earlier in the month (April), 300-plus million Americans now anxiously await the court’s decision, which will be to the public announced this coming June. And as the general political atmosphere continues to move towards that of a heated Presidential election, partisanship on the decision is seen and felt nationwide. Proponents of the law—signed into law on March 23, 2010—argue that it is a long overdue legislative accomplishment that addresses a discriminatory healthcare industry that leaves roughly 52 million Americans without coverage (figures according to the Commonwealth Fund); opponents argue that it is an invasion of personal freedom indicative of an out-of-control federal government moving dangerously fast towards socialism.

While Senator Obama successfully campaigned on a single-payer platform—a system in which one entity (a government run organization) would collect all health care fees, and pay out all health care costs—, what was ultimately passed in Washington D.C. two years ago (HR 3590) ended up looking more like a regulatory piece of legislation on the healthcare industry rather than a complete overhaul. However, it is not without its merits. And while liberal and progressive supporters of Obama might not be completely satisfied with the law—Physicians for a National Health Program, from whom we borrowed the Statue of Liberty image, still push for a single-payer system for instance—the truth is that it was a milestone democratic achievement. Whether or not the law will stand, however, remains to be seen.

The Bill: A Contentious Birth

So what did the final bill look like exactly? According to Peter J. Smith of the George Washington University School of Law, who summarized it succinctly in his paper Federalism, Lochner, And The Individual Mandate: “PPACA’s principal objective was to make insurance more readily available and affordable, regardless of the insured’s health condition”. And, “it seeks to accomplish this goal by prohibiting insurers from denying coverage of pre-existing conditions and from denying eligibility based on health status, medical condition, or disability”. Furthermore, by requiring that all individuals purchase health insurance or face a ‘tax’ (although legal arguments are currently being had over whether it’s a ‘tax’ or a ‘penalty’), the bill effectively increases the size of the pool of individuals paying into the system, therefore allowing for insurance companies to remain profitable while still covering individuals that have previously been denied coverage. While this is not the single-payer system many progressive Democrats were hoping for, it seems like a successful middle-of-the-road solution in that it extends coverage through the pre-existing privatized apparatus.

However, while PPACA is an accomplishment in that it does extend coverage, a total of 28 states did not see the constitutionality of it. And 26 of those 28 went on to file a joint action case against the Federal government (Florida v. United States Department of Health and Human Services) arguing that mandating the purchasing of insurance exceeds the authority of Congress to regulate interstate commerce and therefore does not fall within the scope of the powers granted to Congress under the Commerce Clause—remember that all legislation has to be pursuant to a provision, or provisions, of the United States Constitution.

The claims were upheld by Judge Roger Vinson in Florida v. United States Department of Health and Human Services (January 31st, 2011). The hearing, unsurprisingly, was controversial in and of itself and would also go on to be challenged. On August 12, 2011, a divided three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Judge Vinson’s decision in part, agreeing that the mandate was unconstitutional, but held that it could be severed, allowing the rest of the PPACA to remain. In response, the federal government declined to seek an en banc review by the Eleventh Circuit and instead petitioned for the U.S. Supreme Court to review the panel’s ruling and on November 14, 2011, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a writ of certiorari to the United States Appeals Court for the Eleventh Circuit to consider appeals to its rulings in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius and Florida v. United States Department of Health and Human Services.

Legal Timeline of PPACA:

March 23rd 2010, PPACA is signed into law

March 23rd 2010, Florida along with 12 other states file a joint case against the United States Federal Government—an additional 14 states would eventually join the suit.

October 14, 2010, U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson ruled that the U.S. states could proceed with the lawsuit to overturn the new health care reform law.

January 31, 2011, Judge Vinson issued an opinion finding that the Individual Mandate was not severable and that the entire law must be overturned.

The Justice Department expressed its intention to file an appeal with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

On August 12, 2011, a divided three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Judge Vinson’s decision in part: the court agreed that the mandate was unconstitutional, but held that it could be severed, allowing the rest of the PPACA to remain.

On September 26, 2011, it was reported that the Department of Justice would not ask for an en banc review by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

So, where does PPACA stand? Well, there are a total of four issues that SCOTUS is reviewing, which are as follows: The applicability of the Anti-Injunction Act, which prevents prohibits courts from striking down tax laws before the take effect; the constitutionality of the Individual Mandate; the Severability (of the Mandate)—or, in other words, can the bill be effective without that portion of the law—; and lastly, whether or not the expansion of Medicaid as presented in the bill violates the Constitution.

For our purposes here, though, we will limit our focus to the linchpin of the bill, the Individual Mandate. And the exact question before SCOTUS on those grounds is whether or not the Federal Government has the constitutional power to require that all individuals purchase health insurance. And the constitutionality effectively boils down to the applicability of the Commerce Clause, defined in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3;[2] of the Constitution as such:

[The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.

Predictions have so far been split over whether or not the Supreme Court will determine that the individual mandate falls within the scope of the clause. However, giving a speech two weeks ago at a White House Press Meeting, President Obama—himself a former professor of Constitutional Law—stated that he was ‘confident’ that the SCOTUS would uphold the law:

“I’m confident that this will be upheld because it should be upheld. That’s not just my opinion; that’s the opinion of a whole lot of constitutional law professors and academics and judges and lawyers who have examined this law, even if they’re not particularly sympathetic to this particular piece of legislation or my presidency.”

Besides highlighting that the Congress that passed the legislation is democratically elected whereas Supreme Court Jurors are appointed for life—which would therefore, he argued, make such an overturn nothing more than “Judicial Activism,” which is slight erroneous as the court does have the power of “Judicial Review [of law]”—, Obama meant that overturning a major piece of legislation drafted by a democratically elected Congress would be an unusual act of the court. But, let’s go even further. Just how far does the Commerce Clause extend? And is there precedence one way or another with regard to application of the Commerce Clause to such a piece of legislation?

To understand if the mandate falls within the bounds of the Commerce Clause when need to understand the arguments being made. And as summarized very well by Professor Sheldon Nahmod at the IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law, both sides are effectively as follow:

“The argument here [i.e., against the mandate] is that this is not your usual commerce clause case. This is a case in which what’s being regulated is not doing something, but failing to do something—failing to buy healthcare insurance. And the argument is that, among other things, that this is not an economic activity that subject to congressional regulation under the commerce power and the related argument is that if it were, what could congressional not force us to do in terms of buying things? […] The [counter] argument is that the decision not to purchase health insurance is effectively an economic decision […] And it’s part and partial of a overall healthcare and healthcare insurance scheme which effects millions of people over state lines. So, the decision not to buy health care insurance in a situation where everybody at some point with or without insurance are going to need insurance means that people without healthcare insurance are costing people money that the rest of us who have healthcare insurance are paying for and the argument is that is not fair and not economically efficient.”

So, your “localized decision” not to purchase healthcare insurance—when you are in fact inevitably going to end up needing healthcare—is actually not a solely “localized decision” at all. Because of how intertwined the healthcare insurance industry is, it affects me even though I may live 5 states over. In short, it affects interstate commerce. And is there precedent? Has the Supreme Court ever before consider a case involving what might have been described as “local activity” and found that the Commerce Clause gave it the right to regulate? The answer is yes. Professor Nahmod continued:

“There was a case in the early 1940’s involving a farmer’s decision to grow wheat for home consumption and the Supreme Court held that Congress under the Commerce Clause could regulate that. And more recently, in the Raich Case coming out of California, the medical marijuana case, the Supreme Court also held that that could be regulated by Congress in order to continue to effectively regulating the interstate shipment and treatment of drugs that were prohibited—part of a complex regulatory scheme.”

Ultimately, the Individual Mandate does fall within the scope of the Commerce Clause. As James F. Blumstein, University Professor of Constitutional Law and Health Law & Policy at Vanderbilt Law School, put it when interviewed by the New York Times recently: “For the states to succeed in having the law declared unconstitutional, the Supreme Court would have to modify significantly existing analysis and doctrine surrounding the Commerce Clause,” speaking to the fact that US government has been using the clause increasingly since 1937 to carry out necessary laws much like PPACA.

The argument surrounding the applicability of the Commerce Clause to PPACA’s Individual Mandate comes down to whether not purchasing healthcare insurance is a form of economic activity as Congress only has the power to regulate economic activity—they do not have the right to regulate economic inactivity. At its core, it’s a seemingly ridiculous question: Is the decision not to take economic action itself a form of economic activity? So, while no one is arguing that Congress does not have the right to regulate the insurance industry under the Commerce Clause, the plaintiffs maintain that requiring individuals to “engage in commercial transactions they would otherwise have avoided,” and, therefore, the mandate by definition regulates inactivity. But as argued acutely in response:

“As the government and others have argued, a decision not to purchase or maintain insurance can just as easily be conceptualized as a form of activity—in essence, a decision to self-insure or to plan to seek health care without any means to pay for it (and thus often at public expense). Decisions about how to fund eventual healthcare expenses – whether by purchasing private insurance, securing a job that provides health insurance, planning to take advantage of government-provided health care, or planning to rely on the financial assistance of family members – are economic decisions that, in the aggregate, have a substantial effect on interstate commerce.”

In the end, when you consider that, according to Roll Call, the average family, including Members of Congress, is already paying $922 more each year in health insurance premiums to cover the cost of treating the uninsured, it becomes nearly indisputable that the decision not to purchase healthcare insurance does affect both intrastate and interstate commerce and is therefore a form of ‘economic activity’. While it might not be direct ‘economic activity,’ it is an active economic decision. And, when you couple that with the fact that Congress has long compelled individuals to take action that they might not otherwise take—under Article I to compel citizens to register for the draft, and no one seriously contends that Congress lacks authority to require individuals to report for jury duty or to respond to the census—, it becomes quite difficult to argue that the individual mandate is unconstitutional as pursuant to the Commerce Clause.

Furthermore, as this case makes its way to the Supreme Court it is important to keep in mind that it is the only of its kind that has made it out of the appellate court, which is good news for the Obama administration. Three federal appellate courts in Washington, in Richmond, Va., and in Cincinnati, rejected substantive challenges to the healthcare law. The most important of which—Seven-Sky v. Holder—took place in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. And not only was the mandate found to be constitutional, but leading conservative intellectual Judge Laurence H. Silberman stated:

“The right to be free from federal regulation is not absolute and yields to the imperative that Congress be free to forge national solutions to national problems.”

Lastly, and as recently highlighted very well in an article by Einer Elhauge in The New Republic, mandates are nothing new. In fact, even there are numerous examples of when the Founding Fathers imposed insurance mandates—including George Washington himself. Einer points out three unknown historical insurance mandates:

In 1790, the very first Congress—20 of them framers—passed a law including a mandate requiring that ship owners buy medical insurance for their seamen. This law was signed by President George Washington.

In 1792, a Congress with 17 framers passed another statute that required all able-bodied men to buy firearms.

In 1798, Congress addressed the problem that the employer mandate to buy medical insurance for seamen covered drugs and physician services but not hospital stays and enacted an individual mandate requiring seamen to buy hospital insurance. The law was signed by John Adams.

Haunting Historic Parallel: Contention for the Commerce Clause

In addition to the case for the constitutionality of the mandate under the Commerce Clause there exists a haunting parallel, which deserves reflection. According to Professor Peter J. Smith’s aforementioned paper (Federalism, Lochner, And The Individual Mandate), in 1964 the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Virginia filed an amicus brief in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States urging the court to invalidate the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The note read “Can anyone seriously maintain that our forefathers deemed it to be part of ‘liberty’ that the Congress of the United States could dictate to them those persons whom they must serve in their private business establishments? The brief then cited the Ninth Amendment’s reminder, saying ‘enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people’ and went on to argue that ‘since the day of its ratification, one of those rights has been the right to discriminate in private business establishments.’ Lastly, the brief asked, ‘How can it now be asserted that the Commerce Clause, which was already a part of the Constitution, has somehow destroyed that right?’

As Smith closes out his paper by saying, there is an eerie echo of these arguments in the lawsuit filed by the current Attorney General of Virginia to challenge the constitutionality of the PPACA in general and specifically the mandate under the commerce clause. And while we don’t necessary have to assume that the current challenges before the court are tainted by the same invidious desire to defend a shameful practice, it is hard to argue that they are not similarly flawed arguments in what they advance—namely, that any expansive application of law by the Federal Government is unconstitutional. In short, there seem to be larger geopolitical motivates driving the fierce rallying cry against ‘Obamacare’.

Despite the right’s belligerent reaction to PPACA, the majority of Obama’s policies are moderate when placed in a historical context. Nevertheless, the Republican Party has found it advantageous to paint him as a careless tax-and-spend socialist. Even Mitt Romney, the architect of the Massachusetts plan (i.e., An Act Providing Access to Affordable, Quality, Accountable Health Care) and a relative moderate in the republican field, has been running on the platform that his first order of business as president would be to repeal Obamacare and then require states to draw up their own health care legislation—he has not, however, elaborated on how he would make sure that all state laws would coordinate in accordance with each other in order not to further complicate an already byzantine healthcare insurance industry. But the truth is that the PPACA is shocking similar to healthcare policies drafted, designed and discussed by both Republican and Democrat US Presidents throughout history. In fact, the whole idea of instituting an individual mandate was a Republican idea that came about by the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation (the 1989 report is available to right) as an alternative the Single Payer System typically favored by progressives. And as mentioned by Josh Gerstein of Politico, the individual mandate was the leading alternative favored by conservatives such as Gingrich when President Clinton was pushing universal during his administration’s first term.

So, just how centrist is Obamacare? Here is a bullet-pointed list of previous attempts at healthcare reform made by Presidents of both parties (based off of a recent piece in the New York Times that you can access here):

1912, Theodore Roosevelt was the first President to touch the issue, promising national health insurance and women’s suffrage during his campaign for the Progressive Party.

1934, Harry Truman was unable to touch healthcare due to pressures felt by powerful lobbies such as the American Medical Assocation (AMA) despite his intentions.

1945, coming off the WWII, President Harry Truman called on Congress for a health care overhaul. He proposed compulsory coverage, increased hospital construction, and a doubling of doctors and nurses nationwide. However, echoing 1934 as well as the current political climate, the AMA and other critics cried of “socialized medicine” and the plan never made it out of Congress. And although he would attempt to get legislation passed again in 1948, the Korean War thwarted any would-be successes.

The next president to push for health care reform was John F. Kennedy whom tried to push his Medical Aid Bill, which was ultimately stalled due to powerful lobbying by the medical industry.

1965, along with a Democratically-led Congress and labor unions, Lydon B. Johnson created the Medicare and Medicaid programs, which provide comprehensive health care coverage for people 65 and older as well as the poor, blind and disabled. This is widely considered to be the most important piece of healthcare reform legislation.

1971, with health cost being to increase sharply, mainly due increases in the cost of hospital care, health costs become a major political issue and Republican President Richard M. Nixon supports a proposal requiring employers to provide a minimum level of insurance to employers while Senator Edward M. Kennedy (Democrat) proposed the “Health Security Act,” which was a single-payer health reform plan.

1973 President Nixon signs the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973, which established H.M.Os as we know them today.

1976, following Edward M. Kennedy’s lead on the issue was President Jimmy Carter, who campaigned on the need for “a comprehensive national health insurance system with universal and mandatory coverage”. However, the recession that followed his election took precedent over any such legislation.

1988, Republican President Reagan signed into law the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act, created to protect older Americans from financial ruin because of illness. Benefits included setting ceilings on Medicare patient’s payments for hospitals, doctors and prescription drugs. (However, the Catastrophic Coverage Act was repealed as hundreds of thousands of more affluent older Americans objected to paying the surtax that would be used to fund the program.)

1993, President Bill Clinton looks to provide universal coverage by managing competition. In short, he wanted to keep the industry privatized but implement stronger regulation. But yet again, Clinton’s efforts died due to strong industry lobbying and partisan politics. However, only four years later Clinton had some success with the creation of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-Chip), which would bring coverage to more than 7 million children by 2008.

Placed in this context, Obama’s legislation sharply mirrors the more centrist plans proposed over the past 100 years. And in more recent memory, it is almost identical to the legislation Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney signed into law in Massachusetts—simply expanded. According to Johnathan Gruber, a key intellectual architect to both Romney’s healthcare law as well as Obama’s law in addition to being a professor of Economics at MIT:

“[…] they’re the same fucking bill. He [Romney] just can’t have his cake and eat it too. Basically, you know, it’s the same bill. He can try to draw distinctions and stuff, but he’s just lying. The only big difference is he didn’t have to pay for his. Because the federal government paid for it. Where at the federal level, we have to pay for it, so we have to raise taxes.”

He goes on to say:

“Basically, this is the last hope for a free-market solution for covering the uninsured. If this fails, then you either give up on the uninsured or you go to single-payer. Those are the only two options left. And the Republicans, if they’re willing to stand up and say, ‘We give up on the uninsured,’ then great, let them say that and let the voters come to the polls and decide, but they won’t say that.”

Ultimately, when you contextualize the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act, it becomes clear that it is not an over-reaching socialist policy but rather a moderate free-market solution that brings coverage to millions of Americans that will otherwise be left without coverage. It’s actually quite surprising that such a bill would be signed by a Democrat President—while PPACA does force insurance carriers to provide insurance to customers regardless of ‘health status, disability or medical condition’ and is therefore seen as an accomplishment, it makes that possible by expanding the pool of individuals in the market, thereby ensuring the success of the free-market. The individual mandate helps to ensure a large market for private insurance carriers and helps insulate them for the costs they would assume if they were simply required to cover all those who wanted care without the guarantee of an overall larger patient pool. And so the question remains—what will happen if the Supreme Court ends up being activist rather than judicious and repeals the legislation?

Potential Political and National Consequences: Uninsured and Unmarketable

If either the individual mandate or ‘Obamacare’ in its entirety is repealed, there will be immediate consequences. Not only would a repeal damage Obama’s re-election bid as it would be very difficult to rebound from such a large piece of ‘unconstitutional’ legislation, but as parts of the law have already been implemented, it would mean taking coverage away from Americans—including children—who just recently were awarded it for the first time. Plus, there are substantial deficit costs associated with PPACA. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), repealing the national health care law would reduce net spending by $540 billion in the ten year period from 2012 through 2021—that number represents the cost of the new provisions, minus Medicare cuts. Plus, repealing the bill would also eliminate $770 billion in taxes. It’s the tax hikes in the health care law (along with the Medicare cuts) which accounts for the $230 billion in deficit reduction. Here is a list of what else will happen if either all or part of PPACA is repealed.

More specifically, if the Individual Mandate is repealed:

The most disastrous consequence of repealing the mandate but allowing the rest of the bill to stand would be the collapse of the insurance industry. As stated by Avik Roy or Forbes Magazine: “it would totally destabilize the private insurance market. The Obamacare individual mandate is relatively weak, as mandates go; but repealing it, while maintaining the law’s requirements that insurers take all comers regardless of age or health, will drive insurers out of business, in what economists call the ‘adverse selection death spiral.’”

Repealing the mandate will deprive the Supreme Court of the opportunity to rule on the constitutionality of the provision, and on the entirety of the Affordable Care Act [ACA]. While the Supremes may decide to uphold the mandate, it is also possible that they will use the opportunity to rule on the mandate to finally install some constraints on Congress’s exploitation of the Commerce Clause. This has significant long-term implications for the cause of limited government and would amount to ‘Judicial Activism’.

According to FierceHealthcare (Daily News for Healthcare Executives), Hospital executives, including the American Hospital Association (AHA), are worried that if the Supreme Court strikes down the individual mandate, their organizations’ finances will be hurt if not destroyed, especially if other provisions under the healthcare law that cut reimbursements remain intact. As hospitals across the country have been pumping capital into their resources, preparing for the millions of anticipated patients to come through provider doors—providers were counting on the estimated 30 million newly insured in 2014 that would affect patient volume and offset the Medicare and Medicaid cuts—, where will they make up the cost of those expenditures if the patient pool is not longer poised to increase?

According to Moody’s Investors: “Bad debt, which averages 10 percent of revenues at for-profit hospitals, will expand. Uninsured individuals enter the healthcare system through the emergency room and often wind up being admitted to the hospital and amassing bills they may not have the means to pay.”

Lastly, if the individual mandate is repealed, insurers will increase their rates. To pay for care of the sick, insurers need premiums from the young and healthy people who would be required by the mandate to maintain coverage. But if the mandate is repealed, they’ll have to find a different way to make up those costs. If they try to do it by raising premiums, deductibles, or other customer expenses, healthy customers with less need of coverage would be driven away, forcing them to raise premiums again.

And if PPACA is struck down in its entirety (According to various sources including the White House and the Congressional Budget Office):

2.5 Million More Uninsured Young Adults. 2.5 million young adults who have been able to stay on their parent’s health insurance thanks to health reform will be without it.

2.65 Million Seniors Would Pay $1.5 Billion More for Prescription Drugs. The Affordable Care Act provides a 50 percent discount on covered brand name prescription drugs for seniors and people with disabilities who hit the donut hole. This discount has saved 2.65 million seniors more than $1.5 billion through October 2011. The discount will increase until the gap is eliminated in 2020.

45,000 Americans with Pre-Existing Conditions Would Become Uninsured. As of November 2011, the Affordable Care Act’s Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan has provided insurance to 45,000 Americans who have been locked out of the insurance marketplace because of a pre-existing condition.

Insurance Companies Would Be Free to Cap Care for 102 Million Americans. Under the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies cannot drop your care when you get sick, or place a lifetime limit on your care. Today, the 102 million Americans whose health plan included lifetime dollar limits have seen their coverage expanded.

Insurance Companies Would Be Free to Drop Coverage for up to 15 Million Americans. The Affordable Care Act finally put an end to one of the most abusive practices of the insurance industry: retroactively canceling coverage for a sick patient based on an unintentional mistake in their paperwork. Before the health care law was signed, most of the 15 million people purchasing coverage in the individual market were vulnerable to this policy.

Closing Arguments: Liberty’s Lineation

In closing, the political climate in the United States is volatile, and partisanship makes for very difficult policy-making. Few, if any, would debate that. And while it is also true that this volatility has also been compounded by a prolonged economic recovery, there are larger influences at play. The Republican Party has enthusiastically embraced a paradigm shift to the hard right over the past 20 years, driving the framework that holds to the right of what we might call the “historical right”.

And while the election of Barack Obama in 2008 seemingly speaks to the contrary, the larger trend speaks louder. Take the Supreme Court jurors, for example. The current Supreme Court is arguably the most conservative in modern history. As pointed out by American statistician, psephologist, and writer Nate Silver in the New York Times piece, “one statistical method for analyzing the Supreme Court, in fact, already finds that the current court is the most conservative since at least the 1930s”.

Mr. Silver goes to summarize a methodology known as the “Martin-Quinn Scores,” which are used to measure the relative location of SCOTUS justices on an ideological continuum to better understand the politics of the high court. And it achieves this by giving justices a score on a one-dimensional scale that runs from liberal to conservative, with negative values representing liberal justices and positive values representing conservative ones; the scores for individual justices can change over time if their voting behavior changes. The included graph nevertheless clearly profiles the ideological tendencies of the court by representing the most liberal justice at any given time by the leftmost line on the chart and the most conservative justice by the rightmost one followed by additional lines to represent the second, third and fourth most liberal justices, and so forth. The thick black line in the center of the chart, however, is the important one. And while Silver does mention that the method should be approached with ‘some caution’ as it does not take into account the subject matter the justices are voting on, the graph clearly demonstrates that the current court has veered further right than any court in the last 80-plus years.

Of the 9 justices that comprise the court, 2 were appointed under George W. Bush (Alito and Roberts), 2 under Reagan (Kennedy and Scalia), and one under George H.W. Bush (Clarence Thomas)—the remaining 4 (Breyer and Ginsberg; Kagan and Sotomayor) were appointed under Clinton and Obama respectively. Likewise, so far it looks as though the decision is going to come down to a 4 – 5 split, one way or another. And most legal scholars are naming Justice Anthony Kennedy as the will-be deciding vote. However, as recently argued by Lawerence Lessig—Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard University as well as a Professor of Law at Harvard law School—maybe we will all find ourselves surprised by justice Scalia’s ultimate decision as he is considered to have the leading jurisprudence on the commerce clause. According to Lessig:

“Scalia’s commerce clause jurisprudence is among the most careful, and, in my view, precise among the justices likely to impose a constitutional limit on Congress’ authority. His concurring opinion in Gonzales v. Raich, a case about whether Congress had the power to regulate home-grown marijuana, maps a very clear formula for testing Congress’s authority. If you apply that test to Obamacare—especially in light of the evidence just published by my colleague Einer Elhauge—there can be little doubt about the answer.”

Nevertheless, Lessig goes on to express doubt suggesting that the debate is purely political. In the end it is a conservative court feeling pressure from a conservative republican party so obstructionist that they are constantly seeking new extremes in their conservativism—and also a court that is no as unpopular as the conservative controlled congress that has been lobbying it .

In the end it comes down to whether or not you believe health is a deservedly liberty or a product to be controlled by whimsical hand of the free market. And if you believe in the latter, then you have to decide how to make it available—through a free-market solution like the one at hand, or through a centralized, single-payer system. In any event, there are tens of millions of Americans that can’t get the coverage they need. While PPACA is not a perfect piece of legislation, it is a long-overdue step in the right direction. Instead of campaigning on ‘Nobama,’—trying to repeal every policy he has implemented without necessarily having an alternative, much like Romney has done with regards to healthcare reform—maybe Republican efforts would be better served amending the law or even embracing more centrist ideas that they embraced in the past. After all, it might be refreshing if conservative lawmakers and politicians alike were able to be patriotic on issues differing from ultra free-marketism and militarism for a change.

The more probable outcome is that Scalia, along with Alito, Roberts and Thomas, votes against it leaving Kennedy as the true determining vote (no relation to the Kennedy political family that had long trumped healthcare reform). And I personally fear that the politics of the day will ultimately prove more powerful than jurisprudence under precedence. We need the court to be judicial, not judicious; maybe the Supreme Court is now going to take it upon itself to regulate Congress’ economic authority—something that they haven’t done in modern history. Either way, in the end it all comes down to constitutionality of the Commerce Clause (which I believe we have proven) and one remaining question: Can a country truly claim to have the best healthcare on earth if it’s not legally available to the entirety of its citizenry?

Boston, MA, USA – The US Secretary of Energy, Dr. Steven Chu, visited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) late last year to deliver his comprehensive discourse on the current state and future of US Energy Policy, Winning the Clean Energy Race. Highlighting historic examples as well as recently implemented policies under the Obama Administration, Dr. Chu made the case that United States is positioned to regain its manufacturing leadership through new materials that can be used in carbon-free technologies. And by recapturing this premier positioning, he suggested, help create a more energy-efficient world.

A Beginning: The Afternoon and then the Future

Few and far between are willing to argue that world is not precariously positioned with respect to energy consumption—according to Enerdata, for instance, not since 1973 has world energy usage increased, in percentage terms, as much as it did in 2010. However, such urgency for a new direction is not unfamiliar. After the expectant formalities and cordial introductions, Dr. Chu opened the afternoon by reminding the audience of a few very important examples when science has changed the course of history and in some cases, saved us from ourselves—after all, to cite a cliché, necessity is the mother of all invention. He started by highlighting a number of innovations and “Transformative Technologies” in agriculture and later went on to touch on other sectors such as information technology and transportation, ultimately arriving at his prescription for our current energy predicament, new materials.

Coming Back from the Brink: Innovations in Agriculture

For his first example of past “Transformative Technologies,” Dr. Chu reached back over a century to 1898 when Sir William Crookes issued a dire warning to the western world. At the time, England was importing nitrogen based fertilizers from South America in order to enrich nutritionally-depleted soil, a consequence of over-farming. The trouble was that even the reserves were starting to run low and unless an alternative was found there would be widespread famine. Specifically, Crookes stated the following:

“England and all civilised nations stand in deadly peril of not having enough to eat. As mouths multiply, food resources dwindle. Land is a limited quantity, and the land that will grow wheat is absolutely dependent on difficult and capricious natural phenomena… It is the chemist who must come to the rescue… Before we are in the grip of actual dearth the chemist will step in and postpone the day of famine to so distant a period that we and our sons and grandsons may legitimately live without undue solicitude for the future.”

The underlying message was clear: The pace of consumption was unsustainable and millions would starve unless an alternative was discovered. It’s also clear that Crookes was issuing a challenge to science. But he wasn’t doing so blindly. While Crookes based his claims on the early work of Wilhelm Ostwald, it was the notorious Fritz Haber that answered his call when he successfully fixed nitrogen from air and turned it into ammonia, which is then used to produce nitrogen-based fertilizers, in 1918 (for which he was later awarded the Nobel Prize). Thirteen years later, Carl Bosch, was also awarded the prize for industrializing the process. As it’s know today, the Haber Bosch process is not only estimated that have been responsible for feeding half of the world’s 700M at the time of the Industrial Revolution (~1750), but according to Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch, and the Transformation of World Food, it is estimated to currently sustain about one-third of the world’s population. But, in 1960, the equation changed. It looked as though Haber and Bosch had merely postponed an inevitable crisis. The worry was articulated by Biologist Professor Paul Ehrlich who, largely echoing the l “Malthusian Catastrophe”—which predicted an inevitable regression to subsistence-level conditions as a consequence of population growth outpacing agricultural production—issued the following statement in his 1968 book The Population Bomb:

“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”

While the essence of Ehrlich’s words still rings true today and should not be disregarded—it’s commonly stated that 15 million people die every year from starvation—, his prediction was ultimately wrong. In fact, just two years after Ehrlich’s dire prophecy Normal Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking work on breeding disease-resistant as well as dwarf strains of wheat with thick stems that could support heavier kernels that allowed plants to support the rapid growth spurts caused by nitrogen-based fertilizer in poor soils, which has had a undisputable impact on fighting starvation despite its environmental controversy (namely, that it lead to mono-cultures and fertilizer-intensive farming). It’s as if additional solutions have been discovered almost as needed. Nevertheless, the worlds’ population is continuously growing. And so the question arises, what happens next?

Climbing to the Plateau: Population Stabilization

In order to understand the urgency of energy policy reform, we need to understand population trends. And compared with growth rates from the last two centuries, the world’s population has been increasing exponentially and is set to grow by another billion over just the next 13 years. But before we answer the next question, does this mean starvation en masse is inevitable? How are we to cope with an ever-increasing world population and limited resources? Dr. Chu continued:

“It turns out that when populations get wealthier, when the women get more educated […] and when the infant mortality rate drops—people stop having families of 10, 12 and 15 because they expect their children to grow up from infancy to adulthood… and the fact that in wealthy populations you have to spend money to put your kids through college might have something to do with it… but, in any case, what happens is that in developed countries and the wealthier parts of the population actually are going down to negative population growth—the fertility rate is actually less that 2.1% or 2.2%, which is what you need to break even.”

In other words, the world population might peak sometime in this century—which is timely for both agriculture and energy. Projections by the United Nations have it peaking towards the beginning of the 22nd century. And Dr. Chu was in complete accordance and went on to say that he expects it to plateau and then even decline: “My feeling is that if we can just get over this hump,” he offered with modest humor, “we can make it… It will occur naturally [population stabilization] due to a lot of other things, but certainly education and wealth are huge in that”. It seems as though a higher global standard of living will lead to decreased population growth and therefore allow for a more sustainable population. But the intelligence of our energy policy is not dependent solely on how we produce food or how many of us there are.

Tying population growth trends into the general thread of his discourse, Dr. Chu moved onto innovations in information technologies and pointed out that it is the cell-phone that is the most “desired luxury item on earth,” and then gave a detailed explanation of the “transformative technology” of how vacuum tubes developed by Bell Labs ultimately led to solid-state transistors and from there the integrated circuit, intel-chips and optical fibers which make wireless communication possible and as an example of technology ingenuity before moving on to touch on examples in other areas.

Bright Ideas Take Flight: Getting Transportation Technologies off the Ground

Illustrating how transformative manufacturing techniques can serve as a template for how the United States can lead the way in clean energy usage and manufacturing, Dr. Chu shifted gears and said simply: “Let me tell you a little about airplanes.” He went on to explain that in 1898, Samuel Langley received $50,000 from the War Department and $20,000 from the Smithsonian to develop a human piloted heavier-than-aircraft. However, after the second take-off and subsequent crash, he decided to abandon his efforts for the sake of the pilots’ lives. Interestingly enough, though, only 9 days later on December 17th, 1903, in Kittyhawk, SC, the Wright Brothers were successful in their efforts. Flight was born; and shortly thereafter the United States Military became their largest customer. However, even the Wright Brothers were unable to make flight flawless and when these technologies made their way across the Atlantic to Europe by 1917, the United States had fallen behind and was no longer the leading designer or manufacturer of airplanes.

“So what did we do? Now, did we say ‘we invented it, production is off-shored, but that’s okay, we invented it?’ No. The United States said ‘we’re going to get back the lead’’. And that is exactly what the United States did. By allowing private companies to carry the mail, the US government effectively opened up the space for competitive innovation, which when coupled with constant demand—the military continued buying planes—led to a hot marketplace and progressive engineering. Furthermore, the United States government put in place regulations to make flight safer, which led to the development of a passenger business. Chu’s argument was clear:

“Federal support is critical to technology leadership.”

But what exactly do the Wright Brothers have to do with “Winning the Clean Energy Race”? The simple answer is that each of these examples serves to not only illustrated timely innovation but also serve to lay out the methodology the United States should use in moving towards renewable energy. And a great example of what we need to do now in order to increase our manufacturing of clean energy technologies can be found, ironically enough, by looking at the history of the automotive industry.

Innovative Manufacturing: “They’re Henry-Fording us”

Offering another historic example of American ingenuity, Dr. Chu called to memory Henry Ford, reminding the audience that: “Henry Ford did not invent the internal combustion engine, or automobile. Dailmer and Benz did. Ford [improved] the assembly line and [developed] the ability to create high quality, low cost automobiles.” And, he continued: “America became the dominant automobile manufacturing force in the world by increasing production efficiency.” Essentially, Ford created what Dr. Chu refers to as “a market for the multitudes”—which is what’s needed now in order to grow our clean energy industry.

Fast forwarding a couple decades, Dr. Chu actualized his model by touching on Suntech, currently the world’s largest manufacturer of photovoltaic solar modules. He explained that the company was founded in 2001 by an Australian citizen with a Phd in Electrical Engineering who came up with a better way of producing silicon solar used to produce the modules. China, where founder Zhengron Shi was born, aggressively invited Suntech to set up their headquarters in the city of Wuxi as well as a number of manufacturing plants throughout the country. Besides the obvious relevance to clean energy and the painful reminder that China is out-investing the United States by leaps and bounds, what’s particularly interesting about Suntech is how they go about manufacturing their solar panels. First, Suntech imports raw silicon crystal material from US suppliers, then they manufacture solar cells in an automated plant in China. And while they are building assembly plants around the world, in countries such as Germany, Spain and the United States, they are keeping the “high tech stuff” at home. Or, as Dr. Chu put it: “So, what did Suntech do and what is China doing?”

“Well, they’re Henry-Fording us. That’s what we did to Dailmer and Benz. So, it was high tech manufacturing and quality production that dominated the market.”

Dr. Chu closed out this section by returning to the advent of automotives, drawing one last parallel—that there is even more to be learned from the rapid adoption of automobiles, one of “the fastest transformations we’ve ever seen”. When you consider the infrastructure required for large scale manufacturing of automobiles the question of what drove this rapid adaptation arises naturally. And the answer is encouraging. Automobile technology was superior to horse-power and would have replaced it eventually, but it was also more environmentally friendly which accelerated its rate of adoption. Chu elaborated that in 1880, there were approximately 160,000 horses that produced 3-4 million pounds of horse manure every day in New York and Brooklyn (1.27 billion pounds per year). Consequently, by the 1920s, most major cities were becoming increasingly dominated by automobiles; and by the 1940s most urban areas were entirely dominated by automobiles. In other words, the new technology was more quickly adapted because of an environmental pollution issue. There was an environmental concern. There was a necessity for innovation.

“Well,” Dr. Chu said, confidently setting up the next section of his lecture, “here’s another environmental concern—”

Suess: Why Do We Really Need Clean Energy Anyways?

It’s our warning—it’s our wake-up call and it should be our impetus. It’s the proof as to why the need for clean energy is both necessary and urgent. The definition for the Suess Effect, named after Austrian physicist Hans Suess who first noted the phenomenon, is as follows:

“The relative change in the 14C/C or 13C/C ratio of any carbon pool or reservoir caused by the addition of fossil- fuel CO2 to the atmosphere. Fossil fuels are devoid of 14C because of the radioactive decay of 14C to 14N during long underground storage and are depleted in 13C because of isotopic fractionation eons ago during photosynthesis by the plants that were the precursors of the fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide produced by the combustion of fossil fuels is thus virtually free of 14C and depleted in 13C. The term Suess effect originally referred to the dilution of the 14C/C ratio in atmospheric CO2 by the admixture of fossil-fuel produced CO2, but the definition has been extended to both the 14C and 13C ratios in any pool or reservoir of the carbon cycle resulting from human disturbances.”

In layman’s terms, while advances in assembly line production allowed us to create high quality, low cost automobiles more easily, it also resulted in an unprecedented spike in greenhouses gases in the atmosphere—i.e., carbon dioxide emissions—; and also nitrous oxide. Furthermore disconcerting, these increases mirror population growth and industrialization. In short, global warming looks to be more of a direct correlation than a coincidence. It’s manmade.

By reminding the audience of this evidence (that the warming of the earth’s climate is a consequence of human activity rather than a result of a natural process), it seems as though Dr. Chu wanted to reiterate the need for some of the policies and new materials he would go on to lay out in greater detail. Also, he keeps in tying all advances in “Transformative Technology” to a catalyst: Just as starvation served as the catalyst for the Haber-Bosch process, it’s the Suess Effect that is serving as the catalyst for the development of carbon free technologies.

Making the Answers: Innovation Materials Processing

Before getting to core of his argument for building a better future, Dr. Chu wanted to exemplify how we can improve on materials that we are already using. And for this, another story. In 1884, the Washington Monument was capped and the material chosen was aluminum. What might explain for using aluminum versus say bronze coated in gold on such an important monument? Cost. The cost of aluminum at the time was $1/oz whereas the cost of gold was $20/oz. Aluminum was a cheaper, alternative Precious Metal. And the price differential can be attributed to a new and more inexpensive process for refining aluminum that was invented.

The Electrolytic Process (using electrolysis in an industrial capacity to refine metals or compound at a high purity and low cost) is a great example of how materials processing will allow for incredible energy savings particularly with respect to today’s commonly used materials such as titanium:

“If we can make titanium through a similar electrolytic process as we use for aluminum, it gets to be close to the price of aluminum. So, we are working on this, we are funding this. To make aviation-grade titanium, we’ll see a 9X reduction in energy, and we’re thinking perhaps a 5X reduction in cost […] Here’s an example of where materials processing could really revolutionize things the way it did with aluminum.”

And these innovations in materials processing could have a profound impact on fuel consumption. Over the last 40 years or so we have seen commercial jetliners become increasingly efficient in this regard. Today’s Boeing 707, for example, uses only 30% of the fuel of its predecessor, the 787. But the goal is to make airplanes even more efficient, which is currently being addressing through a new idea that has just recently come forth: Out-of-the-autoclave manufacturing, a substantially cheaper process to the autoclave.

But the potential fuel and production cost savings don’t end there: “If you substitute the steel we use predominately in us cars today with higher tensile strength steel [tensile strength: the maximum stress a material can withstand], you can reduce the average weight of the car by 25- maybe up to 30%”. And if you reduce the weight of the car, you can make the engine smaller. Yet another example of where the US needs to look to other countries; Asia and Europe have been transitioning over the last decade or two to a higher tensile strength, roughly 4 -5X higher strength per weight. In short, if you can make a lighter automobile—that is nonetheless safer—you can dramatically increase fuel mileage therefore decreasing fuel consumption on a national level. Sadly, “there is one manufacturer of this high-tensile strength steel in the United States… it’s an Indian company; there’s a Russian company that wants to build a factory and there’s a Swiss company that wants to build a factory.” And, echoing the point he made on photovoltaics, Dr. Chu said poignantly:

“We’re missing a U.S. company.”

This should be a major focus for the United States as we refocus our automobile industry. Not only are we undermining the marketability of the automobiles that we manufacturer here in the states by not further incorporating high tensile strength steel, but it’s part and parcel in our dependence on foreign oil—which has multitudinous geopolitical implications. We need to minimize our total oil consumption, currently listed as ~6.9 billion barrels per year according the U.S. Government. And when you consider that 72% of those almost 7 billion barrels (i.e., 4.9 billion) are allocated for transportation purposes (45% for “light duty vehicles”) a great way to decrease our total per capita consumption is by requiring automotive manufacturers to achieve higher Miles Per Gallon standard. Dr. Chu not only insinuated that the advent of a U.S. manufacturer of high tensile strength steel is soon to come by alluding to the new measure passed by the White House this summer that requires all passenger cars and light trucks to achieve a combined average of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 when he closed out this section by saying: “There was no incentive [to move to high tensile strength steel] when the fuel standard was 25 MPG; there’s now a big incentive when you go to 55 MPG.”

Building Better Buildings: Incentivizing the Initiative

Lowering our dependence on fuel and our CO2 emissions by using lighter steel, or reducing the energy required to manufacture airplane wings and fusil lodges are a great way to get us where we’re going more efficiently, but what about our buildings? This time more directly citing an energy achievement of the Obama administration rather than a goal, Dr. Chu took a moment to announce the details of a new energy initiative known as the Better Building Challenge that seeks to make commercial buildings more 20% energy efficient by 2020 (i.e., use 20% less energy). This is to be achieved by calling on CEOs and university Presidents to either build more energy efficient buildings or retrofit existing buildings. While the incentive for the former is clear—if you build a more efficient building you reap the benefits of lower operating and utility costs—, adoption has been slow. The sad truth is that although the technology used in building more energy efficient buildings is the same in cost as less energy efficient technologies, most architects and structural engineers aren’t aware of it:

“The biggest obstacle [to building more energy efficient buildings] is a lack of knowledge.”

It’s unfortunately appropriate that the biggest obstacle to there being more energy efficient buildings is a foundation of awareness, but the administration has acknowledge this knowledge absence and address is through the Better Building Case Competition. The program challenges university students to reduce the “persistent barriers to energy efficiency that have limited the energy efficiency market.” Because the barriers are high: “How do you induce industry, commercial – sector, whatever, to build a more efficient building when the payback period is 1 to 5 to 10 years?” Hopefully the fact that buildings can be made to consume 50% less energy and still be equally comfortable will prove to be enough incentive.

This is an encouraging example of steps in the right direction and is in-step with the European Union’s “Directive on Energy Performance of Buildings (2002/91/EC),” which likewise seeks a 20% reduction in Greenhouse gases emissions by 2020 and a sister energy savings of 20% for that same year. As Dr. Chu went on to point out, however, as the United States continues to take steps in the right direction we are going to have to dig deep—we are going to have dig deep in terms of investing, innovation and, lastly, quite literally.

Rare Earth Metals: Rarely Found Outside of China

Definition:The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) defines rare earth metals as a collection of seventeen chemical elements in the periodic table; these are the fifteen lanthanides, as well as scandium and yttrium.

To put it simply, rare earth metals are a collection of 17 elements that are used to perform highly specific task for many current and emerging alternative energy technologies including electric vehicles, batteries for automobiles, photo-voltaic cells, energy-efficient lighting, and turbines for wind power. The problem, however, is that the majority of rare earth metals are being mined in China. Or, as Dr. Chu put it: “the only problem with the rare earth metals is that China produces over 95% of them”. Consequently, the availability of these materials becomes greatly limited because China naturally wants to use these rare earth materials in their products, thus driving prices up significantly. China has all of the rare earth materials and they want to use them in Chinese products, so we need to find substitutes. In other words, China has effectively monopolized the market, which is bad for prices as well as availability and therefore the adoption of energy efficient products and technologies. The answer, once again, to a limited a fix demand, is to find an alternative source and or increase supply.

While the United States holds approximately 13% of the world’s total REEs in deposits located across 14 states, there is only one American REE company—Molycorp—and mining is just now restarting. So, it might be a while before a direct market impact is felt. Moreover, that’s a small percentage compared to the 37% China is purported to hold in reserves. So, what else are we doing? Dr. Chu asked, before again answering his own question: “We’re also looking at how to use rare earths sparingly and it turns out there is one approach where you take a nano-particle of rare earth and put it in a soft magnetic, that’s easily magnetized by the permanent magnet, and if you space the nanoparticles correctly in a 3-dimensional ray […] you get a magnet that is more powerful than the rare earth magnet at a fraction of the cost because you’re using the expensive stuff very sparingly. The problem is that you can do this is small samples, but you need bulk. Again, it becomes a matter of manufacturing thing.”

The importance of REEs on adoption rates of clean energy can’t be stressed enough given the range of products that require them. Plus, the amount of energy consumed in the United States and the stranglehold that China has the REE market—thereby causing somewhat of an international “hassle” to advanced adoption of the technologies made from those REE—the stage is set for the United States to become a leader in clean energy technologies.

Moving on to underline the importance of quantities, Dr. Chu shifted gears back to photovoltaics, illustrating the inverse relationship of production cost to volume—i.e., the Marginal Cost. Dr. Chu went out to make another poignant comment that can be applied to all of the materials and necessary manufacturing methods in question:

“[…]if you plot the cost of production on an alogorithmic scale in terms of cumulative [production] volume what you find in virtually every technology is the cost begins to decline [as a consequence of greater manufacturing].”

And this has held true for silicon solar modules. Over the past 2 ½ years, the cost-per-module has decreased 70% from $4 per unit to just over $1 per unit. Furthermore, the DOE’s SunShot Initiative supports efforts by private companies, national laboratories and numerous universities to drive down the cost of solar electricity to about $0.06 per kilowatt-hour in order to enable solar-generated power to account for 15 – 18% of America’s electricity generation by 2030.

(It should be pointed out that prices for REEs fell this past summer due to large American, European and Japanese companies moving operations to China, reducing inventories, using alternative materials and even curtailing production to avoid paying the high prices. Buyers of Chinese REE effectively reduced demand in order to cause prices to drop, resulting in a market surplus—which manufacturers have been trying to offset by halting production.)

The Future: When Does It Begin?

The future has begun. But in many respects, the United States is behind where it should be in terms of technology adoption and policy implementation. And given the United States potential capacity for manufacturing and therefore expanding the market of greener technologies, this is problematic. But it’s also changing. What it all comes down is cost. At the moment, solar energy, for example, is cheaper than gas energy but only because of subsidies. More troubling, there is somewhat of an aversion to these newer technologies. Many view outfitting the home with solar panels as inconvenient. This was addressed by Dr. Chu when he said sweepingly “you have to take away the hassle”. In other words, as Dr. Chu pointed out when speaking of innovative manufacturing, demand has to be greater for the solution than for the problem—we have to have more demand for the right materials rather than the wrong materials. We have to make using renewable energies a “no-brainer” and it has to be done soon.

So, how do we “take away the hassle”? Dr. Chu drew the audience’s attention to a few success stories. The first of which was national business model. Simply Solar is the leading source of Solar Energy and how they’ve gone about acquiring that title is particularly inspiring. Recognizing this “hassle,” Simply Solar offers a progressive new idea known as “Solar Leasing”. What this means is instead of having to make the investment in solar modules (photovoltaics) yourself, Simply Solar leases the equipment to the clients for no upfront costs and even provides maintenance; the lease is transferable, if desired, and the cost of energy is lower than commercial rates. And to its credits, there are no federal funds supporting the program. This is a standalone example of where innovation responds to a new marketplace and entrepreneurship takes over. Furthermore encouraging, they have increased solar installation tenfold in the state of Arizona, which is indicative of a larger trend:

“Solar will cross over to levelize the cost of electricity with gas in one to two decades—and in the sunbelt, probably one decade.”

For the next and last success story, Dr. Chu moved on to talk about Brazil’s sugarcane fuel production as an example for biomass collection and production—a way to make biomass energy cheaper. Brazil has done an amazing job of building its bio-mass fuel industry. From 1970 to today they have increased the yield-per-hectare 3x. And the way they have gone about this is through mechanization. Brazil has industrialized and streamlined not only the collection of sugarcane, which has greatly decreased production costs. Instead of machetes to cut and collect sugarcane, now they are harvester but they have also improved on transportation—“[they then] put stalks in these little truck, little truck goes to the big truck, automatically dumps it and big truck goes to the plant”. This drives energy and cost inputs down. Again, examples for the United States to follow.

“And,” Dr. Chu went on, “this is what we need to do for plants [biomass] engineered for energy,” suggesting that by using a wider catch-radius we can drive down the production costs and make the final price of biomass fuels cheaper for buyers.

Policy Prognosis: Where Are We Headed?

The policy prognosis for the Obama administration in particular and the United States in general is increasingly positive, but the US isn’t quite the global leader (although the US does commonly rank in the top 5 countries in terms of “New Capacity Investment” and “Renewables Power Capacity”). Just as it’s necessary to break China’s monopoly on the REE market—through either fabrication methods, domestic mining and/or finding more alternatives—in order to widen the parameters of products being and the ease with which they’re produced, we also need to convenience consumers that these products are superior. All of which is necessary if the US hopes to achieve Chu’s prediction that in the next century renewable energy will account for 70 – 80% of total energy.

We’ve had our industrial revolution, our transportation revolution and our information (i.e., digital) revolution all of which were great sources of economic growth and brilliant ingenuity that positively changed people’s lives across the globe. Now it’s time for a full-out clean energy revolution. The federal government needs to keep setting targets and entrepreneurs need to keep finding ways to hit them. It’s time for the US to invest more time, money, and intellectual resources in developing “Transformative Technologies” for the clean energy space. After all, the obsolescence of fossil fuels is axiomatic and as Dr. Chu said to close out the afternoon: “We still have the opportunity to lead in the clean energy race […] this, in the end, will be the seeds of our future prosperity”.

For more on Dr. Steven Chu and Clean Energy:

Click here to see Dr. Chu’s “Winning the Clean Energy Race” live on MIT TechTV.

Click here to see Dr. Chu explain why we should all paint our roofs white on his 2009 visit to The Daily Show.